


Once I Called You Brother

by hearmerory



Series: Change of Address [13]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Autism, Autistic Zuko (Avatar), Azulon isn’t a good parent either, Car Accidents, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Depression, Domestic Violence, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Intergenerational Trauma, Iroh (Avatar) is a Good Uncle, Iroh has the best off screen redemption arc, Iroh's Spiritual Journey, Iroh's childhood, Lu Ten (Avatar) is a good cousin, Minor Character Death, Moral Ambiguity, Morally ambiguous Iroh (Avatar), Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Ozai (Avatar) is also just Iroh’s little brother, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Ozai's childhood, POV Iroh (Avatar), Zuko (Avatar) is an awkward turtleduck, everyone in Iroh’s life is dead it’s so sad, implied/referenced eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27735844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearmerory/pseuds/hearmerory
Summary: Iroh is playing war games with the boys next door when his mother calls him inside.His knees covered in mud and his face lined with war paint, he sits down at the table opposite his parents and listens as they tell him the news.There’s going to be a baby.Iroh's little brother is his entire world. Until everything is gone, or broken, or lost. Until his little brother destroys everything he touches. Until there’s nothing of him left to love.
Relationships: Azula & Iroh (Avatar), Azula & Lu Ten & Zuko, Azulon & Iroh (Avatar), Azulon & Ozai (Avatar), Iroh & Lu Ten, Iroh & Ozai (Avatar), Iroh & Ursa, Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Lu Ten & Zuko, Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Change of Address [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1928572
Comments: 81
Kudos: 355





	Once I Called You Brother

**Author's Note:**

> Damn, guys. Happy thanksgiving. This is long.
> 
> The stories in this series kind of slot together. If this is your first dip in, you should probably backtrack and read at least Swords and Katas, Like it Didn’t Matter, The Ways of Tea and Failure, and Fast Learner. I recommend reading all the previous installments though.
> 
> There’s nothing graphic in this, but there is discussion of injury/death, and implied child abuse, eating disorders, violence etc.

Iroh is playing war games with the boys next door when his mother calls him inside.

His knees covered in mud and his face lined with war paint, he sits down at the table opposite his parents and listens as they tell him the news.

There’s going to be a baby.

Iroh looks between his father’s worried frown and his mother’s hopeful smile, and asks the question that had been bubbling inside him since they first said _baby_.

“Aren’t you too old?”

“Iroh!” Ilah scolds lightheartedly. “It’s rude to point out a lady’s age.”

“Sorry, Mother, but... it’s true? I thought you had to be young, to have babies.” He bites his lip, looking over the wrinkles at the corners of his mother’s eyes, the grey hairs blossoming at her forehead.

“You’re not wrong, son,” Azulon says gently. “But... we’re very happy. Your brother or sister will be very precious.”

Iroh bites his lip. All of his friends already have younger siblings. He doesn’t know anyone who’s eleven years older than their brother or sister.

“Everything’s going to be fine, sweetheart,” Ilah smiles. “I promise.”

* * *

Iroh stays with Kuzon and Piandao next door when his parents go to the hospital.

He can’t help being nervous, on top of his excitement.

Mother had looked so pale.

He sleeps fitfully, wishing he was at home in his own bed, with his parents in the next room, and not on a camping mattress between two of his friends.

When Azulon comes to get him the next morning, he knows something is wrong.

They walk back to their house in silence, Azulon’s steps slow and sluggish.

“Father, what’s wrong?” Iroh can’t help the shake in his voice, can’t stop the worry from seeping into his tone.

They go inside, and Azulon kneels down in front of him in the hall, holding his hands tight.

“Iroh... I...” Iroh’s breath comes choppy as tears well up in his father’s eyes. He’s never seen his father cry. “I’m sorry, son. Your mother... she didn’t make it. She died in the middle of the night.”

“What?” Iroh can’t believe it. Can’t process it. He must have heard wrong. It can’t be true.

“She—” Azulon’s voice breaks, the tears spilling down his cheeks, “she died. There were complications, with your brother, and she... she just...”

Azulon drops his hand and covers his own face, trying to muffle the shaking sob that erupts from his chest.

“No,” Iroh shakes his head violently, “no, that’s not right! You said it was going to be okay!”

“I know,” he moans, “I know, I’m sorry.”

“No!” Iroh yells, “no! Where is she? Bring her back!”

Iroh puts his hands on his father’s shoulders and shakes him.

“Bring her _back_!”

“I’m sorry,” Azulon whispers, and pulls Iroh to his chest, holding him as anger breaks into tears.

* * *

They go to collect the baby at lunch time, and Iroh won’t look at him.

He has their mother’s eyes.

He cries. Horrible, bawling screeches that hurt Iroh’s ears and make his father scrunch his eyes shut.

He won’t stop crying, and Azulon is just... sitting there. Staring blankly at the wall as though he can’t hear.

“Father!” Iroh eventually snaps over the sound of his brother’s wails. “ _Do_ something!”

Azulon turns slightly to look at Iroh, and Iroh clenches his fists in desperation. Azulon turns away again, his face blank and pale, and stares into nothingness.

Iroh kicks the doorframe on his way out, and goes to the baby’s crib.

He’s tiny. Smaller than Iroh had expected. His diaper is heavy and gaping around his pale legs. His face is red, verging on purple with the force of his screaming.

“Come on,” Iroh says, some mixture of grief and defeat and frustration tinging his voice sour.

He picks the baby up and holds him against his chest. He slings the bag of baby things they’d brought home over his shoulder. It hangs low on him, bumping against his knee.

His mother would have known what to do. The thought brings tears to his eyes that have nothing to do with the rancid smell wafting from the baby’s diaper.

He carries the baby out, past his silent, staring father, through the front door and into the street.

He walks mechanically, barely even hearing the breathy infant screams, and finds himself at Kuzon and Piandao’s house.

The door opens before he knocks.

“Iroh!” Heena is taller than Iroh’s mother. She smiles more broadly, but it reaches her eyes less.

“I don’t know how to make him stop,” Iroh feels his lip wobble. Feels heat behind his eyes. “Father isn’t... isn’t doing anything, and I don’t know how to make him stop crying!”

Her face crumples into sympathy, and she leans over to take the baby from him, cupping her hands around his back and bottom, resting him over her shoulder.

“Come inside, sweetheart. We’ll fix it.”

She teaches him how to hold the baby.

How to change his diaper.

How to warm up milk to feed him from the bottle.

How to prop him up on his shoulder to let him burp.

How to mop up the tiny dribbles of sick that stain his shirt.

He looks down at the baby in his arms. He’s quiet now. Pale and small and clutching at Iroh’s thumb.

He has their mother’s eyes.

Iroh can’t bear to look at him.

“What’s his name?” Heena asks gently, wrapping her arm around Iroh’s shoulder and pulling him close to her.

Her arm is so much like his mother’s. But it’s not.

“I... I don’t... I don’t think she named him,” Iroh whispers. “Father hasn’t said.”

Heena’s hand tightens around his shoulder, and he pushes down a sob.

“Do you remember them mentioning any names they’d like?”

“I... I think she wants—” Iroh cuts himself off, choking on the present tense, “she _wanted_ Ozai.”

He lets his head flop onto Heena’s shoulder, and doesn’t let the tears stinging his eyes fall down his cheeks.

He doesn’t cry. Not for years.

“That’s a lovely name,” she says softly, bringing her hand off his shoulder to pet his hair, so similar yet so different to his mother. “It suits him.”

He looks down at the little baby, and agrees.

“Ozai,” he whispers. The baby looks up at him, and Iroh swears he smiles.

* * *

The baby becomes a toddler. Becomes a child.

And Azulon barely comes out of his study.

Iroh makes breakfast, and packs their school bags, and listens to his brother read for the required ten minutes every night, and signs his homework journal.

Iroh puts bandaids on grazed knees, and wipes away angry tears from mean playground comments, and answers letters from teachers about unruly behavior.

Iroh has tickle fights and throws water balloons and teaches his brother to ride a bike. To climb trees. To swim. To light a campfire.

Iroh puts up holiday decorations, and teaches traditional prayers, and sings them to sleep in his bed.

Iroh lets him call him Ro, even though he’s perfectly capable of saying the whole thing. It’s endearing. It feels nice.

Iroh watches his father leave for work every morning, his suit perfect and his hair slicked back, briefcase in hand and back ramrod straight. And he watches him come back every evening, his shoulders slumped forward, his feet dragging on the carpet, and watches him retreat into his study without a word.

Iroh knocks on his father’s door every night, and asks if he can come inside. If he can open a window to let in fresh air. If he can bring some soup. If he can change the sheets on his father’s bed. If he can do anything to make his father come out and have dinner with them.

The answer is usually no.

And when it’s yes, dinner is awkward and stilted. Azulon and Ozai barely know each other. Azulon knows Iroh at eleven, but not at thirteen.

Fourteen.

Fifteen.

Sixteen.

* * *

Sometimes... not often, but sometimes, Azulon emerges from his study in a mood other than blank.

Sometimes, he comes out on the edge of angry, snapping and sneering at his sons.

Sometimes, he notices that Iroh has been feeding them a steady diet of noodles and oatmeal, and that his elder son’s skinny frame is growing into fat rather than muscle.

Sometimes he stands in the doorway to the kitchen, watching Ozai finish his homework as Iroh plates up their food, and he throws Iroh’s dinner away.

He makes the boys sit opposite each other, makes Iroh watch his brother eat his dinner, and sends the older boy upstairs hungry.

A few missed meals is enough to drive the point home.

A few missed meals is enough to fuel sparks of resentment between the two boys.

A few missed meals is enough to make Iroh pinch at his sides when he looks in the mirror, punishing and hating and so angry he can barely see.

* * *

Letters home from school about Iroh go unanswered. Azulon doesn’t ask about bruises from fights. Doesn’t ask about split knuckles and loud music and slammed doors.

Iroh figures he doesn’t need to say anything about failing grades, or detentions, or getting caught smoking behind the math classroom.

He definitely doesn’t need to say anything about getting caught with a girl, whose name he only knows because he listens to attendance get called, in the boys locker rooms.

And he absolutely doesn’t need to say anything about his four day suspension for brazenly drinking in History and flipping off his teacher.

Iroh doesn’t tell him about his first break up. Or his first drunken party.

He doesn’t tell him when he’s sick, or when he’s feeling better, or that time he had to go to the emergency room for his broken finger, bruised and elated from winning his latest fight.

Or that time he passes out at school, shivering and _hungry_ , trying to force the tiny roll of fat on his stomach out of his life.

Ozai knows all of it, though. He might be seven, but he’s Iroh’s shadow, and where Iroh goes, he goes.

Iroh takes his brother on more and more daring exploits.

He learns how to hot wire a car from a boy he meets in the park, and lets Ozai choose the car.

It’s sporty. Open top. _Fast_.

Ozai is the one who calls Azulon when they get arrested.

Azulon shows up at the police station four hours later, his beard untrimmed and his hair unwashed, to bail Iroh out and bring them both home.

“I’ve come to expect this from you,” Azulon frowns at Iroh as he crosses his arms defiantly over his chest, refusing to look at his father. “But you?” He looks down at Ozai.

Ozai feels the weight of his disappointment, and shame bubbles up, too close to anger, in his chest.

Iroh has to pay his father back for his bail.

Ozai isn’t allowed to follow his brother around anymore.

Ozai knows which is the worse punishment.

* * *

Sometimes, when Azulon comes out of his study with an emotion on his face, it’s almost happy.

He watches the boys practice martial arts in the yard, and praises them.

He gently corrects their stances, and lets them spar with him, guiding them to stronger hits and better dodges.

Iroh is older, and more advanced, and Azulon always seems to praise him more.

Ozai is little, and his stance is unrooted, and he earns little frowns instead of smiles.

* * *

Sometimes, Azulon drinks.

And when he drinks, he comes out of his study.

When he drinks, he wants to see his sons.

Wants to have them stand in front of him.

Wants to look at them.

Iroh stands next to Ozai and keeps his hand on his shoulder, and rubs his thumb in comforting circles when Azulon speaks.

Because the things he says...

Iroh had never, not since that first day when he’d looked down on the squawking baby and seen his mother’s eyes, blamed Ozai for her death.

But Azulon says it.

It’s only sometimes.

But it’s enough.

* * *

A year after graduating high school, Iroh still lives at home. He hasn’t tried to apply to schools, or for a job.

Any job that doesn’t require a degree is just... pitifully beneath him. But he has no inclination to get a degree.

So he sits around at home in the afternoons. He makes after school snacks. He teaches Ozai fractions and semi colons and the pathways of the major world rivers.

He teaches Ozai katas, and how to block attacks with his opponent’s body weight, and how to hit hard and fast in places it hurts.

He goes out in the evenings with his friends. They drink, and smoke, and get into fights with other groups. He leads a siege against the kids at the skate park, and wins. They sit on the tallest ramp, feet dangling into thin air.

He lets his rage consume him and lets it spit out at other people. He punches and kicks in ways his martial arts instructor would scold him for. He laughs when they hurt. And he doesn’t recognize himself.

Ozai’s nose wrinkles when he comes home, stinking of weed and cigarettes, his breath heavy with alcohol. He’s usually asleep when Iroh comes home anyway.

Iroh gets better at stealing cars.

The trick is to pick something less fancy. Less easily recognizable.

And drive it just a little less fast.

And then everything goes wrong.

He’s changing the radio station when he runs through the red light.

The car jolts, and his forehead hits the steering wheel before he manages to swerve out of the way.

He stops, just for a second, and sees what he hit.

A teenage boy. Younger than him.

Sprawled out in the middle of the road, one arm twisted impossibly backwards. Blood spewing from a cut on his head.

Still, and not moving.

Iroh doesn’t think before he presses the gas. Before he’s miles away.

He doesn’t feel anything until he arrives back at his home, his heart thumping wildly in his chest.

He might have _killed_ someone.

Killed a _kid_.

 _Killed_.

Iroh can’t breathe, his hands clutching at the stolen steering wheel, white lights popping in front of his eyes.

He needs help. He needs to be told what to do. Agni, he’s _young_ , and he didn’t _mean_ to, and he might have _killed_ someone, and this isn’t some fight at school, this is manslaughter, and he’s not gonna get suspended, he’s gonna go to prison, and Ozai’s going to be alone, and he might have killed someone tonight. He might have destroyed a family in a way he is painfully intimate with.

He can’t _breathe_.

He stumbles blindly into the house, and goes straight to his father’s study.

He doesn’t knock. He just lets himself in, and inhales the familiar stale scent.

“Father,” he whispers into the semi darkness. Azulon looks up from where he was slumped over his desk. “Father, I... I fucked up. I think... I think I hurt someone.”

Azulon is next to him when Iroh opens his eyes again.

“What did you do?” His eyes are wide, more alert than Iroh has seen them in almost nine years.

“I... I stole a car, and I... I swear I didn’t mean to!” It’s important, somehow, that his father knows he isn’t a murderer. “I... I hit someone.”

“What?” Azulon hisses in surprise.

“I hit a kid. He can’t have been more than sixteen. He’s just a kid.”

“And you _left_?” Azulon snaps, and Iroh cowers under his condemnation.

He nods.

“Where is the car?”

Iroh tells him.

“Stay in the house. Do not go anywhere. Do not tell your brother about this.”

“What are you going to do?” Iroh whispers.

“I’m going to clean up your mess,” Azulon pushes roughly past him, sending Iroh stumbling into the door frame.

Iroh walks numbly to the living room, and sits on the couch, his head in his hands.

He stays there until his father comes back, smelling like burning.

“You will tell no one about this, do you understand?” Azulon towers over him, and Iroh doesn’t have the capacity to even think about being afraid.

He nods.

“You will never do anything that _stupid_ ever again. You will start at university in the fall. You will intern at my company every waking moment, and when you graduate, you will come and work for me. No more of this sitting around and breaking the law! No more stealing! No more hit and runs! Do you understand me, boy?”

Iroh stares up at him in fear and awe and astonishment.

He hasn’t seen this much emotion from his father since his mother died.

He hasn’t been told what to do since he became Ozai’s de-facto parent.

“Yes sir,” he bows his head.

He’s not going to prison.

He’s not going to rot in a jail cell for murder.

And he will owe his life to his father until the day he dies.

Azulon nods, and turns away.

Neither of them notice Ozai, in his maroon pajamas, crouching on the stairs and listening to every word.

* * *

Ozai doesn’t talk to him anymore.

There’s no more homework at the kitchen table. No more cautious snuggling with books on the couch. No more casual teasing.

He calls him Iroh, and never shortens it. Not even when Iroh tries to tease him. Iroh tries, once, calling him Zai, to see if it will make him smile.

It doesn’t.

Iroh doesn’t do it again.

Iroh gets into university. He majors in finance, on his father’s instruction.

He comes home every weekend to a near silent house. To a distant father. To an angry, unfriendly nine year old who barely looks at him.

To his father snapping at his brother for his angry outbursts, for his rudeness.

To an explanation that Azulon is done with bratty children, and at least Iroh had had the excuse of grief. Ozai didn’t even know their mother, he has no excuses.

He stops coming home.

* * *

He sees the girl in the library, and his world lights up.

She is beautiful. Stunning.

She laughs at something her friend says, and he feels his heart soar.

She is infinitely more than any of the girls he’s slept with. Infinitely more than anything he has ever known.

* * *

He asks her out for coffee, and she says no.

He asks to study with her, and she points out that they don’t take any classes together.

He switches into her Applied Mathematics class, and she relents.

He thinks she’s beautiful, and then he thinks she’s kind, and then he’s irreparably in love with her.

He doesn’t tell her about his mother. Or about his father. Or about his brother.

He doesn’t tell her about the boy he might have killed.

Until he does. And then she kisses his forehead like none of it is his fault, like she forgives him, like he isn’t a monster, and he falls even deeper.

* * *

He brings her home for the winter break, and she meets what is left of his family.

She introduces herself with her full name, Kinu, and he keeps his nickname for her close to his chest. Private, away from prying eyes.

He whispers it, in his childhood bedroom as they lie together, wrapped in each other’s arms.

Kee. The key to his heart. The key to everything he has ever hoped to be.

Oddly, he doesn’t let her call him Ro.

Somehow, that still feels like Ozai’s.

Ozai points out that she looks like their mother, a hint of spiteful condescension in his voice.

* * *

Iroh graduates, joins his father’s company and gets married within two months.

Kinu is everything.

They get an apartment, and he works a hundred hours a week, and she rubs his temples when he collapses on the couch, and he strokes her hair when she’s stressed.

They fill each other. They fit each other.

He sees more than enough of his father at work to ever bother visiting the house.

* * *

He gets promoted. Again and again, until he’s the youngest chief financial officer the company has ever had.

Work is brutal.

He fires people left, right and center.

There are shouting matches in conference rooms. Harsh words over stale pastries. Short, snippy emails with no salutations.

They make strategies. Mergers. Sucking in smaller companies until they’re even bigger, more omnipresent than they had been before Iroh came.

He gets emails, occasionally, from former CEOs relegated to open plan offices on the second floor. Asking for raises. Asking for time off. Asking for more responsibility so they don’t go crazy.

He denies them all. It’s not good for business.

* * *

The days pass quickly, blurring together in dark anger as his work days seep into his evenings, then his nights, then his weekends, until there’s nothing other than his office and his computer and his spreadsheets and his negotiations.

He finds himself losing time, blinking awake in the middle of snapping at Kinu, in the middle of eating silent dinners looking at his phone. In the middle of yelling at his subordinates until his voice breaks.

He spends half of his free time doing katas in the back yard, and the other half running laps of the neighborhood. He can have control, at least in this. There’s no fat on his belly anymore.

* * *

And then Kinu announces that she’s pregnant, and the world slows down.

Color comes back.

He wraps his arms around her and spins her around, and they’re laughing and everything is just like it used to be.

She touches his face, and they kiss, and it’s so gentle he could cry.

So full of love.

So full of life.

He kneels down in front of her and rests his cheek against her stomach.

There’s no heartbeat, it’s too early for that, but he can feel the life blossoming inside her.

Their child.

Their perfect, wonderful child.

* * *

They go back to see Azulon and Ozai the weekend after they see Kinu’s grandmother.

Iroh barely recognizes his brother. He should have anticipated that. Two years is a long time for a teenager.

The boy is almost a man, tall and slim, his limbs only a little too long for his frame.

Astronomically different from the almost sixteen year old he last saw.

Taller than Iroh.

Iroh pulls him into a hug, and feels him tense under his arms. Ozai hasn’t let him hug him in years. Iroh hasn’t been around to hug for years.

They congratulate him. Azulon holds Kinu’s hands and says prayers for her happiness. For her fertility. For her health, and her safety, and her strength.

Iroh knows he’s thinking of their mother.

Iroh’s thinking of her too.

But Kinu is young. So much younger than Ilah was. Everything is going to be fine.

He needs everything to be fine.

* * *

The alarm blares through Iroh’s panicked stupor as the doctor holds his shoulders firmly, dragging his eyes away from Kinu as the other doctors swarm her.

“We have to take the baby,” the doctor touching him says roughly. “We have to go in for an emergency C-section. There are risks. A lot of risks. Your wife is bleeding internally. The baby has a good chance if we do it now.”

Iroh’s breaths come small and fast, not drawing air into his lungs. He can’t stop watching as Kinu’s head lolls to the side, doctors shouting orders and nurses transferring her into a different bed.

“Mr Sozin!” The doctor barks, his own eyes wide and practically begging for Iroh’s attention. For his decision. “We need your consent.”

Iroh shakes his head and closes his eyes, blinded by the horror of watching his wife’s heart monitor speed up.

“Mr Sozin! I’m sorry, but you need to make a decision. The baby is fine right now. We can get him out, get him into the neonatal unit. He’s big enough to be okay. If we want any chance of helping your wife, we need to do this _now_.”

Iroh rips his eyes away from Kinu and stares into the doctor’s.

They brim with sincerity, even through the roughness of his voice.

Iroh nods, and reaches for the paperwork as it’s shoved into his hands.

He signs it.

And he can’t help thinking that he’s signing her death warrant.

* * *

His entire body trembles as he looks down at the incubator.

This technology hadn’t been around when they’d gone to pick up Ozai, so long ago.

His son is already bigger and stronger than his brother was, and yet he’s been encased in this plastic box, monitors and wires overshadowing his little body.

Iroh stands next to him for hours, unwilling to leave.

The nurses don’t usher him away.

Someone must have told them.

Iroh’s hand twitches next to him, subconsciously reaching for her hand and finding it gone.

Irreparably.

Forever.

Lost.

Just like his mother.

He looks down at his son, and feels the burn of angry grief in his chest.

The boy will grow up without his mother. Like Iroh did. Like Ozai did.

Iroh slams his teeth together to stop the sound from erupting from him.

And he will grow old without his Kinu. Without his light, and his rock. Without his heart.

He stares down at the baby.

He will not be his father. He will not wallow in his despair. He will not ignore the child in favor of giving in to his grief.

He reaches a hand between the plastic and touches his son’s stomach.

The baby wriggles, pushing up into his hand.

“Your mother loved you, Lu Ten,” Iroh whispers, speaking his name for the first time since he watched the monitors flatline in the operating room below him.

Since he watched nurses swarm his son on a table as the surgeon tried to save his wife.

Since he knelt on the observation deck floor in desperate prayer and watched them give up.

Watched them take his son out of the room.

Watched them call time of death.

“She loved you so much.”

* * *

Iroh doesn’t quite know how he ends up lying down in his childhood bedroom with a baby sleeping on his chest.

He vaguely remembers knocking on the door, and being snarled at by his younger brother, and then walking up the stairs like they were an insurmountable mountain.

And then he’s just... there. In the dark. Stroking a finger over his son’s fluffy head.

“Iroh?”

That’s his father’s voice, outside the door.

He makes a noise that isn’t a word, and the door opens to reveal the tall man, frowning down at him in concern as he turns on the light.

Iroh squints his eyes against the brightness.

“Son... are you alright?”

He makes another noise, and it’s closer to a sob than a grunt, and then Azulon is kneeling by his bedside, pulling his head close so he can run fingers through his hair.

Iroh cries.

For the first time since the day his father told him his mother was gone.

Kinu is gone.

Dead.

Like his mother.

And he is alone, with a baby to care for and no plans that didn’t involve her.

“Oh my boy,” Azulon mutters, somehow pulling him closer without disturbing Lu Ten. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry this happened to you, too.”

* * *

He feeds Lu Ten a bottle of milk with shaking fingers, ignoring the toast in front of him.

Ozai sits opposite him, his head propped up on his fist, his elbow on the table, moodily picking through his own breakfast.

Azulon sits at the head of the table, drinking his tea and watching his sons with visible sorrow over every feature.

“Have you...” Azulon speaks into the silence and it breaks, like it had always been fragile. “Have you thought about the funeral?”

Iroh’s hand falters, and the bottle slips from Lu Ten’s mouth.

The baby takes in a deep, offended breath, and wails for his lost breakfast.

Ozai looks up at him with a look of utter dismissal.

“How do you expect to keep him alive for eighteen years if you can’t even feed him?” Ozai snaps.

“Ozai!” Azulon shoves away from the table, anger flooding his face. “Go to your room!”

“Fine!” Ozai stands up quickly enough to tip over his chair, and leaves the room, slamming first the kitchen door and then the door to his bedroom, leaving icy coldness in his wake.

Lu Ten doesn’t stop crying.

Slowly, with more care than Iroh had seen from him in years, Azulon reaches for the bottle and the child, and hoists him into his arms.

Iroh watches him stroke his grandson’s cheek to get his mouth open, and put the bottle back between his lips.

Lu Ten stops crying instantly, content to suck on the nip and drink his fill.

Iroh puts his head in his hands and sobs.

* * *

Ozai doesn’t leave his side for the entire service.

They stand together as Iroh speaks his stuttering eulogy, and when he breaks down, Ozai takes his paper and reads the rest himself, letting Iroh grip his arm too tight to keep standing.

* * *

Iroh doesn’t miss the irritated, almost jealous looks his brother keeps shooting at his infant son.

Ozai won’t hold him. Won’t feed him.

But he does watch.

Iroh catches him standing almost protectively over the crib one morning, watching him sleep.

“Are you sure you don’t want to hold your nephew?” Iroh asks quietly.

Ozai whips around, and Iroh sees him schooling his expression from curiosity and sadness into annoyance.

“Of course I don’t,” he snaps, “he gets quite enough of _that_ from you and Father.”

Ah. So that’s it.

“Father wants to get to know his grandson,” Iroh says, keeping his voice gentle and understanding.

Ozai huffs.

“You’re doing fine on your own, you don’t need _him_ to coddle the boy.”

“I’m grateful for the help both of you have given,” he reaches out to touch his son, stoking the back of his finger against the tiny cheek.

“You...” Ozai breaks off and turns slightly away, so he doesn’t have to look at the baby. “You’re... you’re not _broken_ , like he was.”

Iroh knows what he means. Knows that Ozai is thinking of all those times, when he’d been small, that Azulon had closed his door and left them for days at a time, not emerging to eat or speak to them.

“Lu Ten doesn’t have anyone else,” Iroh whispers. “Only me. I... I have to be strong for him.”

“Then maybe you’ll be a better father than I had,” Ozai says, without malice, without praise. Just throws the words between them, and turns to leave without waiting for Iroh to reply.

* * *

He stays for six weeks. Until Ozai’s high school graduation.

And then he goes home.

Back to the house he and Kinu had prepared to raise their child in.

It’s empty.

He knew it would be. But it still hurts.

* * *

He turns off his computer at six o’clock, now.

Puts his phone on silent at the weekends.

Takes days off for holidays and birthdays.

Comes to school plays, and parent teacher conferences.

Helps with fractions, and semi colons, and world rivers.

Fatherhood is an achingly familiar experience.

And Lu Ten makes everything worth it. His grin never leaves his face. His eyes are her eyes, and they sparkle in amusement whenever Iroh sees him.

Lu Ten is his everything. His legacy, and his blood, and his heart.

He fills the gap Kinu left. Not all the way. But enough that Iroh can get out of bed every morning and make breakfast.

Enough that he can help his son _live_.

He wonders, sometimes, in the middle of the night, why he and Ozai hadn’t been enough for Azulon. Why his father had left him to raise his brother, a shadow and a ghost in their home.

He wonders if there was just... something wrong with them. Something rotten in them that isn’t in Lu Ten. Something their father couldn’t bear to touch.

* * *

Ozai fails his advanced finance classes, and scrapes together enough credits to graduate a semester late with a business degree.

It’s not what their father wanted, Iroh knows that, but it seems unfair to just... not attend his graduation.

Iroh goes. Lu Ten refuses to sit in his own seat, comfortable on Iroh’s lap even though he’s getting a little big for it.

Ozai walks across the platform and glances out at the empty seat next to Iroh.

They don’t talk after the ceremony.

He sees Ozai with his arm clasped around a girl’s shoulders, and leaves him to it.

He hopes the girl will be for Ozai what Kinu was for him.

He looks down at Lu Ten, and hopes that his brother will have this. This easy relationship with his son. This beautiful child growing and becoming.

He hopes his brother won’t have to do it alone.

He wishes for Kinu. He wishes for his mother.

He takes Lu Ten home.

* * *

Iroh only meets Ursa twice before the wedding.

She is all he hoped for for his brother.

She is kind, and strong, and smart. She kisses his brother’s cheek like he’s precious.

She plays with Lu Ten on the floor, letting him tell her all about his toys, all about his day, all about his Dad and his Dad’s awesome martial arts skills. She tells him how Ozai can do martial arts too, and Lu Ten shakes his head in childlike confidence and tells her Iroh’s better.

A muscle in Ozai’s forehead ticks. Iroh puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s just something children say. Ozai shrugs him off.

* * *

The wedding is small, and beautiful.

Iroh notes that Ursa has just as little family as they do. A cousin, an aunt, a handful of friends, and not much else.

Iroh doesn’t see his brother’s hand twitch tighter around hers when she promises to love, honor and _obey_.

They pour their sake on to the ground, and bind their hands together with red ribbon, and it’s done.

Lu Ten cheers like a wild thing, and races around the reception, talking to everyone and lapping up their attention.

Azulon claps Ozai on the back, and whispers proverbs into Ursa’s ear.

Iroh congratulates the younger couple, and tries not to feel the spike of jealousy, or the twinge of loss.

* * *

They go out together once a month. Now that Ozai is working at the company, now that Ursa likes Lu Ten, it seems odd to exist separately.

Azulon doesn’t come.

They go to lunch on the third Sunday of every month, a different place each time, and they talk.

At first, it’s Ursa and Lu Ten carrying the conversation.

Slowly, Iroh lets himself be drawn in by his son’s endless enthusiasm, and answers questions about martial arts and cars and tells them stories about university, and Kinu, and their childhood.

Ozai looks pointedly away when he skips over his casual felonies as a teenager. When he skips over the boy he nearly killed.

Iroh tells stories about seven year old Ozai following him into trouble, his knees scraped and his teeth crooked, until his brother scowls bitterly, throws money on the table to pay for their meal, and pulls his wife away.

* * *

Iroh leaves Lu Ten with a neighbor and goes to the hospital himself when Ozai lets him know that Ursa has gone into labor.

He can’t sit at home and wait to hear that she’s dead.

He has to be there. Has to make sure there’s someone less involved than Ozai helping to make tough choices.

He has to be there for his brother, in case the worst happens. He cannot let Ozai face that alone.

Like his father faced it alone.

Like he faced it alone.

But Ursa doesn’t die. It’s a normal delivery, and a normal baby boy.

She has the privilege that Ilah and Kinu lost, and she’s there to name her son.

Iroh holds Zuko for a moment, taking in his eyes, so brown they’re almost gold, and passes him to his father.

He collects Lu Ten from the neighbor in the early hours of the morning, and hugs him close.

Zuko will have what his cousin did not. What his father did not. What his uncle did not. Zuko will have his mother, and Iroh can’t imagine a world in which that wouldn’t be enough.

* * *

Zuko is a quiet baby. He doesn’t cry, not like Ozai or Lu Ten did.

He doesn’t really respond at all.

He frowns up at the world, concentrating fiercely, but he doesn’t follow his baby toys with his eyes. He doesn’t giggle for his mother. He doesn’t look towards Iroh when he says his name.

Maybe it’s just been too long since Iroh played with a baby. Lu Ten is close enough to ten years old, and Ozai is grown. Maybe Iroh just doesn’t understand babies anymore.

* * *

Now that Ozai is at the company, Iroh finds himself working longer hours again.

It feels awkwardly like Ozai is competing with him, but he doesn’t know why.

Ozai gets promoted. Not quite as fast as Iroh did.

But then he’s on the executive committee, his seat across from Iroh’s, and Iroh suddenly understands why people didn’t want him in the room, when he was twenty five and under experienced.

But their father is in charge, and he expects great things from them.

So they broker more mergers, and negotiate more acquisitions, and fire people from their jobs by the hundreds.

They tighten up the budget. They cut health insurance benefits, and shave a vacation day off everyone’s package. They up charge their products and increase their profit margins.

And suddenly Iroh is back up to eighty hour weeks, then hundred hour weeks, as his evenings and weekends are consumed by the company.

No matter how long he works, Ozai stays longer. No matter how many emails he answers at two in the morning, Ozai does more.

Iroh and Ozai miss Azula’s birth entirely, on a business trip to the other side of the country, negotiating yet another deal.

* * *

Iroh and Lu Ten spend a Saturday afternoon at Ozai’s house, and Ursa is delighted.

She hasn’t been out much, she explains as Azula feeds.

Lu Ten dives down onto the rug to play with Zuko, and Iroh and Ursa sit at the table, talking in low voices.

“I... I worry about him,” Ursa admits, her eyes flicking to Zuko. The toddler is frowning at Lu Ten’s hands as his cousin pushes a wooden train around the rug.

Zuko’s body bounces slightly, like he’s flexing his muscles and letting them go, over and over.

“What do you mean?” Iroh raises an eye brow.

“I just... I think there’s something... odd about him? He doesn’t... he doesn’t respond like I’d expect him to. He doesn’t look at me, or smile. He doesn’t have any words yet, and he doesn’t even really make noise.”

Iroh frowns. That’s... odd. Lu Ten was doing all of those things at much younger than Zuko.

“Have you seen a doctor?”

Ursa sighs, and shifts Azula to her other breast, helping her latch on and then stroking circles on her bottom.

“Ozai thinks he’ll grow out of it.”

“But there might be a medical explanation,” Iroh tilts his head, watching Zuko turn away from Lu Ten and pick up a different toy, losing interest in the older boy. “He could have hearing issues, or something similar.”

“The boy can hear just fine,” Ozai snaps, appearing in the doorway. “He just chooses not to listen.”

“Ozai, he’s _two_!”

“He’s not some kind of _retard_!” Ozai shoots at Iroh, anger flushing his neck red.

Iroh raises his eyebrows in surprise.

“I only suggested he might not be able to hear,” Iroh says calmly, unsure where the anger is coming from and unwilling to do anything until he knows.

“I’ll not have you two conspiring with each other behind my back,” Ozai spits, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “He hears just fine. Watch.”

Ozai approaches the boys on the rug without announcing his presence.

He stands nearer Zuko, looming over the children, unnoticed by his son and ignored as part of the scenery by his nephew.

Suddenly, without warning, he smacks his hands together, the loud clap reverberating in the small room.

Zuko’s head snaps up, his face a picture of confused pain.

Lu Ten almost falls sideways in surprise, his eyes flicking immediately to his uncle.

Zuko scrunches up his face in objection, and lets out a high pitched wail of noise to rival Lu Ten’s best tantrums, and Lu Ten’s hands leap up to cover his ears.

Azula joins in, her startled cries adding to the general confusion as Iroh stands.

“Why did you do that?” Lu Ten scrambles towards Zuko, looking up at Ozai in suspicion and confusion. “You upset him!”

“Get away from my son,” Ozai snaps, reaching down to grab Lu Ten’s arm in a vice like grip, pulling him to his feet and away from the screaming toddler.

“Ow! Let me go, you’re hurting me!” Lu Ten tries to yank his arm away, but Iroh closes the gap between them in one furious stride.

“Get your hands off him,” Iroh snarls, closing his own hand around Ozai’s elbow, fingernails digging in hard. “Now!”

Ozai’s lip curls in disgust, and he lets Lu Ten go, turning around to pick up Zuko.

Zuko’s cries are even higher pitched now, broken up with grunting and moaning as he rocks on the ground.

Iroh has never seen anything like it.

Ozai pulls his son into his arms, and carries him away, leaving Azula crying with Ursa, and Lu Ten and Iroh staring after him.

“It’ll be okay,” Ursa hushes the infant as she reassures them all. “Ozai is good with him. He always manages to calm him down.”

“Why did Uncle Ozai make that noise?” Lu Ten pulls on Iroh’s sleeve, standing a little closer to him than he normally would, seeking his protection.

“He wanted to show me that Zuko’s hearing is fine,” Iroh explains.

Lu Ten frowns, rubbing at his arm where Ozai gripped it, little red marks marring his pale skin.

“That wasn’t very nice,” he announces. Iroh can’t help but agree.

* * *

He doesn’t take Lu Ten to Ozai’s home anymore.

When they see Ursa, Zuko and Azula, it’s always in the park near their house, never in the house itself.

Lu Ten makes daisy chains, and feeds the ducks, and runs in delighted circles around the pond.

Lu Ten leads Zuko around, not caring that he doesn’t speak, and lets him get his hands dirty in the mud.

Lu Ten is the only one who can get Zuko to smile.

* * *

Iroh’s desk at work is covered in framed photos.

He shouts at people down the phone, keeping one hand near his wedding photo, grainy and yellow tinted as he and Kinu grin at the camera, cake on his lips and laughter in her eyes.

He reduces an intern to tears with half an eye on his son’s baby faced astonishment as he watches bubbles float past him.

He slams a fist down on his desk, veins popping in his forehead as he berates another idiot, and catches sight of the three children, Zuko sitting on Lu Ten’s lap and Azula leaning against him as he reads them a story.

He gets a phone call from Ursa one afternoon, after she cancelled their plans in the park.

She sounds shaky. Worried. Almost like she’s trying not to cry.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says, her voice hushed like she doesn’t want to be overheard. “Zuko... he’s almost five years old and he doesn’t speak. I know he can read. He’s always reading. But he doesn’t talk. He has these huge tantrums over the smallest things, and he’s so fussy you wouldn’t believe it. Over food, over clothes, over _everything_! And as soon as I’m not actively trying to talk to him, he just sits there, spinning wheels on his truck or stroking his stuffed animals. He doesn’t even play, he just touches them. And he’s always... he rocks, and he flaps his hands. He doesn’t like looking me in the eye, and he won’t do it at all for Ozai. It’s... it’s weird, and I don’t understand, and I don’t know what to _do_.”

“Ursa, I really think it’s time to see a doctor. Four is too late not to be talking.”

“Ozai keeps insisting he’ll grow out of it. That he just needs to try. Azula is talking already, and he keeps saying that if she can do it, Zuko can.”

“That’s... not how that works,” Iroh sighs.

“I’m worried about him, Iroh,” Ursa admits quietly. “And it’s exhausting. We’re... we’re always fighting about it, and Ozai is so frustrated. And you know how much he works, he’s always tired when he comes home.”

“I know,” Iroh pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sure everything will be alright, Ursa. You’ll figure it out, I know you will. And Zuko is a smart boy, anyone can see that. He’ll talk when he’s ready.”

He feels oddly useless when he hangs up.

* * *

Zuko’s first words are spoken to Lu Ten.

They meet in the park, and the boys roll their pants up to their knees to paddle in the duck pond.

Iroh watches them closely, very aware that Zuko hasn’t been taught to swim. The water isn’t deep, but you could drown in half an inch if something went wrong.

Lu Ten splashes the water a little with his bare foot, muddy and damp from the bottom of the pond.

He’s talking animatedly, his whole body moving with his words, narrating a story about defeating dragons with the imaginary sword he’s swinging in his hand.

Iroh watches the ducks out of the corner of his eye as they approach the boys from behind Lu Ten’s back.

He watches Zuko focus on them, a smile tugging at his round face.

“Look! Ducks!”

His voice is high, and light, and a little rough.

His eyes widen at the sound of himself speaking, and he touches a finger to his throat.

“Ducks,” he says again, feeling his throat vibrate.

“Zuko!” Lu Ten yelps in excitement, “you talked!”

“Look,” Zuko repeats, pointing at the family of ducks paddling through the water, “look at the ducks, Lu Ten, they’re coming to see us!”

Lu Ten flings his arms around his cousin, and Zuko stiffens before pushing him away, much more interested in kneeling down in the shallow water to be closer to the adult duck, leading her babies towards him.

Iroh feels the tears welling up in his eyes.

Zuko’s speaking. In full, uninhibited sentences.

“They’re so cute,” Lu Ten turns to look at the ducks, and Zuko beams. “How many ducks can you see?”

Zuko frowns like the question is obvious.

“One duck,” he points to the mother, “and six ducklings.”

Ursa holds on to Azula as she squirms, and cries exhausted relief into Iroh’s shoulder.

* * *

Lu Ten gets his first girlfriend at fifteen, and Iroh just about bursts with pride.

His son is a thousand times more generous, more polite, more kind than he ever was to girls at that age.

He buys the girl a rope necklace with a lily pendant, and presents it to her on their one month anniversary. Iroh makes them dinner and calls her parents to let them know that the movie they’re watching will make her thirty minutes late home.

He drives them back to the girl’s house, and Lu Ten kisses her cheek on the porch, blushing fiercely but standing tall and certain as he holds her hand.

* * *

They break up three months in, and Iroh is there with hugs and a soothing cup of tea.

Lu Ten promises him that he’ll find someone eventually. Someone to love as much as Iroh loved Kinu.

They both cry, and it’s okay.

* * *

Lu Ten gets into a fight at school, and Iroh has a moment of panic that his son is turning into the worst parts of himself.

But the fight wasn’t about territory. Or the thrill of violence. Or unleashing years of pent up anger and grief and aggression.

It was about a deaf kid in the grade below, being pushed around by kids in the grade above.

And Lu Ten had stepped in front of him. Taken a solid hit to the stomach and a glancing punch to the face, and thrown all three older boys on the ground.

His lip is split, and so are his knuckles, and Iroh tends to them in the kitchen.

He tells Lu Ten about his own fights.

About the rage that had colored his vision red.

About the noses he’d broken and the kicks that had hit too hard into smaller kids’ stomachs.

He tells his son some of his shame. His regrets.

And Lu Ten touches the tear on his cheek and tells him he’s good now. That he’s not that person. That he’s a father to be proud of.

That Lu Ten would accept no substitute.

Iroh thinks of yelling in conference rooms, and fists slammed on negotiation tables, and knows he isn’t worthy of his son’s esteem.

* * *

He visits Zuko on his seventh birthday while Lu Ten is at a sleep over.

He watches the little boy, and he worries.

He’s talking now. Fluently, and as though he’d never been delayed at all.

But he’s quiet. He doesn’t make eye contact.

His hands flutter at his sides, and he sometimes walks on the balls of his feet.

Iroh watches his brother, and he worries.

Ozai seems colder, more distant, than Iroh can ever remember him being.

He looks at his children like he has nothing to do with them. Like they’re strangers living in his house.

He looks at Ursa in the same way.

Iroh corrects Zuko’s kata, and the boy flinches away like he’s afraid.

Iroh buys Zuko dual swords, and all the clumsiness of his practice drops away, his body flowing through the movements like he was born to hold a sword.

Not even Lu Ten would be able to do it like that.

* * *

“Is there something wrong with Zuko?” Lu Ten asks one evening, after they’ve spent the day at the park with his cousins.

“What makes you say that?” Iroh raises an eyebrow. He’s been wondering the same question for years.

“It’s just... he talks weirdly. Like he doesn’t know what to say. And he doesn’t play games with me like Azula. He doesn’t... he doesn’t _get_ it. Like, I tell him there’s a dragon protecting the cookies, and we have to fight our way past it, and he looks around for the dragon. And then he’s confused, because he thinks I lied to him. I don’t get it.”

“He’s still young, son. We all have our idiosyncrasies.”

Iroh dismisses his son’s worries, and ponders them in bed that night, confused worry digging in his chest.

* * *

The next time Iroh visits his brother’s house, Zuko has grown.

He’s eight, but he’s tall, thin limbs suddenly gangly.

The first thing Iroh notices is the large, dark bruise on Zuko’s cheek. The second thing he notices is the slightly smaller bruise on his upper arm. Both are dark purple, standing out oddly on his pale skin.

“Zuko! What did you do to yourself?” Iroh cups a hand under the boy’s chin, and he pulls away sharply.

The boy frowns at him, his eyes settling somewhere on Iroh’s forehead.

“I’m not good at my katas,” he says darkly, rubbing at the bruise on his arm.

Iroh feels a rush of relieved understanding. He’d been clumsy himself, at Zuko’s age.

“Ah. You will learn, Zuko, don’t worry. It’s always hard to keep your balance well enough not to fall when you’re first learning.”

Zuko frowns in what Iroh thinks might be confusion before Ozai appears behind his son and claps a hand down on his shoulder.

The boy tenses, and goes still and quiet.

“He’ll get better,” Ozai says, and it would almost be a threat, if he were speaking to an employee rather than to his son. “And then he won’t get hurt anymore.”

Zuko nods once, and Iroh leaves him to his practice, heading inside to share tea with Ursa and Ozai.

He politely refuses the slice of cake he’s offered. He hasn’t been working out as hard. He doesn’t need to indulge himself.

They eat dinner early, and Iroh is surprised to find that Zuko spent the entire afternoon in the yard, practicing his sets.

Iroh wishes he’d had that kind of single minded discipline as a child.

They sit down to eat, chatting happily about the children, about work, about school.

Iroh serves their food at the table, and he eats. There’s nothing wrong with salmon and vegetables, he tells himself firmly. Plenty of protein, not many carbs. Nothing that a hard stint of practice later that night won’t solve.

But Zuko doesn’t eat.

He pushes his plate away, and scowls, and his hands flutter restlessly over the table, tapping on the wood and trapping air against his palms.

“Eat,” Ozai orders from across the table, pushing his son’s plate back in front of him.

Zuko looks... almost afraid, for a moment, but then he looks back down at his plate and his breath hitches.

“No,” he mumbles. “It’s not right. It all touches. It’s not supposed to touch.”

“Eat your food, Zuko,” Ozai’s voice is darker, and Iroh sits up a little straighter. Ozai’s voice is so similar to their father’s. But it lacks the hidden depth of warmth.

“No!”

Zuko’s hands flutter harder, and then Ozai is standing, looming over his son. His hands dart out to grab Zuko’s, to stop them from moving, and Ozai _yanks_.

Zuko tumbles forward into the table, and Ozai grips his hands harder, keeping them still and locked in front of him.

Before Iroh has time to calm the situation down, Ozai is leading his son out of the room. Zuko isn’t protesting anymore, so he can’t be hurt by the strong grip baring down on his fingers.

Iroh frowns at Ursa. She’s biting her lip, looking down at the table like she’s trying to ignore what just happened. Azula looks... almost worried, her eyes flicking from the table to the door Ozai and Zuko went through, to the ceiling, like she’s trying to look through it to see them upstairs.

They wait for a moment in the quiet, and there are no sounds coming from above them.

Ozai returns, smoothing his hair back against his head with the palm of his hand, and sits back down.

“He just needed a time out,” he says lightly. Ursa’s head jerks up to look at her husband, and Ozai looks into her face.

Iroh can’t help but notice that they don’t look at each other like they did on their wedding day anymore.

Ursa’s gaze drifts to Iroh, and, just for a moment, there’s something unidentifiable in her eyes.

“Alright, Ozai,” she says, picking up her fork.

They eat quietly after that.

* * *

Ozai misses Lu Ten’s eighteenth birthday party, but Ursa and the children arrive at the restaurant ten minutes late in their fancy clothes.

The restaurant is loud, but not loud enough that they can’t hear each other easily. It’s just that there are a few more large groups in the corners, and the music is turned up a little higher than normal.

Zuko fidgets in his seat, his hands flicking and tapping under the table, his eyes flicking round the room and never settling on his family.

The dinner goes well.

They talk about Lu Ten’s plans for college. About Azula’s third grade teacher. The latest show Ursa’s been to see.

It’s easy to ignore Zuko.

He doesn’t say anything.

But the fidgeting gets worse, and then he’s pawing at his collar, blinking up at the florescent lighting and slapping his hand over his ear all at once.

Iroh hears his own shout of surprise as Zuko drops out of his chair onto the floor and _screams_.

Ursa swears under her breath and makes to stand up, but Azula beats her to it.

Zuko is rocking, curled up on the ground, every muscle tight and shaking, and the sounds coming out of him are just... Iroh has no words for the desperation. For the confusion. For the _pain_.

Azula slips out of her chair, frowning fiercely, and stands over him with her hands on her hips.

“Shut _up_ , Zuzu!”

And she _kicks_ him.

Iroh grabs her arm and yanks her away from her brother as Ursa drops to her knees beside him, pulling him up into her arms and rocking with him.

She cards her fingers through his hair, singing low under her breath as she buries his head in her sweater.

Everyone is staring, the entire restaurant shocked into silence.

Iroh feels the shame bubbling up inside him.

Everyone is watching him. Watching Zuko scream and rock on the ground like some kind of lunatic. Watching him hold a seven year old back from kicking her brother.

It’s humiliating.

And Zuko hasn’t _stopped_.

Iroh has the urge to throw his wallet at Lu Ten and throw his nephew over his shoulder and walk out, back to the privacy of their cars, and wait for whatever _this_ is to be over.

But he doesn’t. He can’t. He can’t even drag his eyes away from the sight of Zuko’s panic, his distress, his clawing, flapping hands burying themselves in his mother’s sweater.

The world outside of Zuko is silent. Watching.

* * *

When it’s over, they leave, and Iroh leaves a huge tip as an apology for the disruption.

Lu Ten carries Azula, even with her token protests, and Ursa carries Zuko even though he’s too big, too old to be carried.

Iroh’s arms are empty, and he wishes suddenly for another child to hold.

They get back to the cars, and the children are strapped into the back seats.

Zuko’s head lolls against the window, his eyes half shut, his hands fluttering weakly at his sides. Azula stares out of the opposite window, her arms crossed over her chest, her face blank.

Iroh takes Ursa’s hand and leads her a few paces away from the car.

“This...” he speaks for the first time in minutes, his voice hoarse and dry, “this is not normal, Ursa. It’s time to see a doctor. You can’t ignore this forever.”

Ursa’s eyes fill with tears, and she shakes her head in denial.

“I... Ozai doesn’t want us to. He says Zuko will learn. He’s been trying to teach him. But... nothing is working. I... I think...”

“Make an appointment,” Iroh lets a tiny edge of his boardroom voice enforce his tone. “I’ll make sure Ozai is busy.”

* * *

Autism.

Ursa phones him to let him know, and he can hear the tears in her voice.

He doesn’t hear from Ozai.

And then he doesn’t hear from Ursa.

Every time he calls, their landline goes to voicemail.

He doesn’t hear from them for months.

Lu Ten thinks it’s strange.

Lu Ten wants to go to their house and see if everything’s okay.

Lu Ten says he’s worried.

But Iroh understands grief. Ozai and Ursa will be mourning. Not a death, but a life that will never be quite what it was supposed to be. Maybe that’s worse.

He researches autism. Reads all about the deficiencies his nephew will have.

Lu Ten says it’s all garbage, that Zuko will be fine. Just a little different.

Lu Ten says his friend is autistic. That Iroh has had him over to their house and not even noticed.

But Iroh sees Zuko, screaming and rocking on the floor of the restaurant, and knows his nephew will never pass for normal.

He doesn’t hear from his brother’s family for two years.

* * *

There’s a knock on his door a few minutes after he gets home from work.

He’s still wearing his suit, his tie loosened around his neck, and he hasn’t even made his tea or stretched out the ache in his back.

He opens the door, and his heart drops.

Two policemen, in uniform with guns and badges on display, stand on his porch, eyes full of sympathetic warmth that makes Iroh’s stomach cold.

They ask to come inside, and he lets them.

They ask him to sit down, and he does, in Lu Ten’s chair opposite the couch.

He hasn’t heard from Lu Ten all day.

He has the sudden, desperate urge to speak to him. To have him here, when the cops tell him whatever they’re about to say.

He fumbles for his phone, ignoring their soft voices asking him to listen to them.

He calls Lu Ten, and it goes to voicemail immediately, his son’s voice asking him politely to leave a message.

He hangs up, and tries again, because there’s no way that these people are here about Lu Ten. If he can just get hold of him, it will be okay.

“Mr Sozin,” the taller cop leans forward slightly, his body language a study in learned behavior. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. There was a car crash, early this morning. Your son, Lu Ten, was involved. His injuries were very serious, and he died in the hospital a few hours ago. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

It’s not true.

Iroh calls Lu Ten’s phone again.

And again.

And again.

Lu Ten doesn’t answer, and the cold, shaky feeling spreads from his chest to his extremities, freezing his body.

His breath comes shallow and shivery, and he blinks when a blanket goes around his shoulders, the shorter cop rubbing his upper arms firmly, warmth seeping through the material from his hands.

Iroh calls once more.

Lu Ten doesn’t pick up.

* * *

They ask him to make an identification, on the body.

It’s incontrovertibly his son.

Even with half his skull caved in and his beautiful eyes closed and a sheet over his small, still body.

“H-how did this happen?” He asks of the cops who brought him there.

“It was a hit and run, sir,” the shorter one puts his hand back on his shoulder. “Someone blew through the intersection and hit the side of your son’s car. We have a license plate from a witness, we’re trying to find the driver now.”

Iroh goes cold.

He did this.

He did _this_ , to some stranger and their family, years and years ago.

He made someone feel this way.

He finds himself on his knees, and he doesn’t get up until someone makes him.

* * *

He goes to Ozai because he can’t go to his father.

He can’t go and sleep on the bed where he slept the night he might have killed that boy.

Where he slept the night his wife died.

Where he slept the night his mother died.

He stays in Ozai’s guest room, and he grieves.

There is nothing left for him now.

No Lu Ten.

No Kinu.

He is alone.

Every light in his life has been extinguished.

Every rock he attached himself to has crumbled under him.

He runs his katas in the guest room until he’s sweaty and tired and panting, and then he screams into the pillows until his throat is raw and his voice is gone and his heart is numb.

There’s nothing left for him here.

* * *

He sells the house.

He quits his job.

He organizes a funeral, and doesn’t say a eulogy.

He packs a single bag that doesn’t include a phone or a laptop.

And he leaves.

* * *

He stays gone for two years, and comes back on what should have been Lu Ten’s twenty second birthday.

He travels all over. He goes back to Japan, first, where his grandparents had grown up. It’s half familiar. Like the stories they’d told had been half true and half forgotten.

Like he almost belongs, but doesn’t. It’s half right, and that makes it more wrong.

He considers, for a long night in an impersonal hotel, if it’s worth it.

If it’s worth it to keep living, when everyone has gone.

If it’s worth it to keep hurting, when Kinu and Lu Ten don’t have to hurt anymore.

The grief and the rage and the aching, numbing sadness are too much.

He doesn’t decide that it’s worth it. But he does decide that Lu Ten would have hugged him fiercely and told him it would get better. That Kinu would have held his head against her chest and let him cry without feeling ashamed.

He leaves Japan. He needs somewhere he doesn’t belong at all.

He hikes up a mountain in Tibet, and makes friends with a guru in an abandoned temple.

The guru teaches him to meditate.

Teaches him to connect his inner self to his outer self to the universe.

Teaches him how to feel everything his body and mind scream at him to feel, and then let go.

Teaches him how to cry and scream at the sky and then sink down into himself and let everything flow through him.

Teaches him how to eat without that overwhelming feeling of shame, of being undeserving. Teaches him to savor what he ingests, to appreciate texture and flavor and taste. Teaches him how to sit still after he eats, and not work out until he burns.

He stays at the temple, with the single, solitary monk, for eight months.

When he leaves, he doesn’t feel like he’ll fall apart.

He goes to China, and learns to play an ancient board game.

At first, it feels slow. Boring.

The old man he plays with chuckles at his impatience, and teaches him about strategy.

Not the kind of strategy that starts with chilling smiles in boardrooms and ends with humiliated CEOs and dozens of people carrying cardboard boxes of their belongings out of offices that no longer belong to them.

The kind of strategy that makes a game interesting, and long, and worth playing.

It’s better, Iroh thinks. This kind of strategy.

The old man runs a tea shop.

One day, Iroh is a customer, making his Pai Sho moves while the old man makes drinks, and the next day Iroh is working there.

He is... not good at making tea.

He’s fine when he’s putting a teabag in boiling water and drinking it distracted during a meeting.

But this is different.

This is measuring out loose leaves and giving them the right space in the diffuser, and using water perfectly heated to the right temperature for the blend.

This is experimenting with different flavors.

This is drying hand picked fruit pieces and flowers in the back room to use in new blends.

This is sitting on the ground with his eyes closed, feeling the warmth of the cup, truly feeling the tea fill his stomach and warm his chest.

This is something different entirely.

This is something he could enjoy.

* * *

He comes back, and finds an empty storefront on the high street.

He finds a small house, a couple of miles away, nestled between trees.

He empties out his storage container and takes his favorite furniture to the new house.

He takes his sentimental things.

Kinu’s things.

Lu Ten’s things.

And he displays them around the house. He doesn’t hide them away.

He can look at them without feeling like he’s dying.

He opens a tea shop in the storefront.

He spends his evenings humming over new blends, and his days sharing the guru’s wisdom to his ever increasing customer base.

He lets himself eat the pastries he serves, and doesn’t make himself work for it. He lets himself accept the softness of his belly.

Everyone calls him Uncle, and he loves it.

He decides, eventually, that it’s time to let his family know that he’s back.

* * *

Everything has changed.

Ozai greets him at the door with a sneer, and tells him without preamble that Azulon died while he was gone. That Ozai took over the company. That Ursa left, and the children stayed with him.

Iroh reels from the barrage of information.

His father’s death doesn’t hit him like Lu Ten’s, or Kinu’s, or his mother’s.

He was old. His heart had been troubling him for years.

But that Ursa left her children?

That leaves a trace of shock through him.

Somehow, despite the clenching derision on his brother’s face, Iroh hears what he’s saying.

Father is dead.

_And you left me._

Ursa is gone.

_And now I have no one._

The children stayed.

_I never wanted to be a father by myself. I don’t know what I’m doing._

Iroh tries to pull Ozai into a hug, and Ozai slams the door in his face.

* * *

The next time he goes to the house, Ozai answers the door with a death grip on his son’s shoulder.

Zuko stares at the ground in front of Iroh’s feet, his hands fluttering and his body trembling.

“You finally decided you want to spend time with your family?” Ozai snaps, his lips twisting into hate as he stares into Iroh’s eyes. “Take this one out for the day. He’s been insufferable all morning.”

Zuko shrinks down, his fingers flicking against his palms, his eyes fixed firmly at Iroh’s feet.

“Of course,” Iroh agrees easily. “I would love to spend time with my dearest nephew.”

“He’s your only nephew,” Ozai snarks. He pushes Zuko forward, making him stumble a little, and closes the door behind them.

Zuko is quiet. Even quieter than he used to be.

Iroh takes him to the tea shop, and teaches him how to put loose leaves inside the diffusers.

He seems to like the monotony of the task.

Iroh asks him about school, and he recites his latest grades. Which... is very much not how Lu Ten would have responded. Iroh puts it down to a focus on patterns or numbers that the book he’d read so long ago said Zuko might have.

Iroh congratulates him. It’s a truly impressive set, with only two Bs, and the rest As or A minuses.

Zuko glances up at him with a frown that looks like he’s questioning Iroh’s sanity, and Iroh laughs.

* * *

His gets a phone call from an unknown number in the middle of the night.

He’s used to picking up late night phone calls, but he hasn’t had to do it for a while. Not since leaving the company. Not since Lu Ten died.

He’s groggy when he answers, and just about manages to croak out a greeting when he hears the sounds coming from the other end.

There’s a gasping wheeze, like an animal caught in a trap, panicking and desperate.

There’s the high pitched whine he’s only ever heard Zuko make when he’s in distress.

There’s the choking sobs as Zuko tries to breathe.

“Zuko? Are you there? Are you alright?”

He’s awake now, so very awake, and he’s pulled on a sweater over his pajamas before he’s even thought about it.

“U-uncle?” His voice is shaky, whimpering in pain and stuttering on fear and shivering with cold.

“I’m here, nephew, what’s wrong? Can you tell me where you are?”

Zuko didn’t phone from his father’s landline. Didn’t phone from his own cell, or from Ozai’s, or from Azula’s.

“U-uncle?” He asks again, quieter, less sure, fading. Like he’s out of energy.

“I’m coming,” Iroh shoves his feet into his shoes and grabs his car keys from by the front door, and then he’s in the car, connecting Zuko to the speakers and turning out of his driveway.

He has no idea where he’s going.

“Zuko, do you know where you are? Are you hurt? Where is your father?”

Zuko doesn’t respond, but his breaths hitch at the mention of Ozai, and Iroh’s hands clutch tighter at the wheel.

“I d-d-don’t k-know,” Zuko stammers, even more quietly, his voice muffled now.

Iroh doesn’t know which question he’s answering. Or if he answered them all.

“What can you see?”

“S’dark,” Zuko’s slurring now, and Iroh can’t lose him. Can’t let him go quiet before he finds him.

“Are you inside or outside?”

“Out,” Zuko whispers. “M’cold.”

“Have you been there before?”

Iroh hears a hum that he thinks is ascent, and drives towards Ozai’s neighborhood. The children don’t travel far across the city.

“Hurts,” Zuko whispers, his voice barely coming through Iroh’s speakers as he speeds up.

“Zuko, I _need_ you to tell me where you are!” Iroh almost yells, and he hears the little whimper from his nephew.

“Mama,” he breathes, and then there’s just silence.

Iroh slams his hand into the steering wheel over and over and doesn’t hang up.

He needs to think.

Somewhere Zuko has been before. Outside. Possibly connected to his mother.

Iroh can only really think of one place that meets that description.

He arrives at the park with the duck pond ten minutes later, and wishes he’d brought a flashlight.

He calls out for his nephew, and there’s no answer, and what if this is the wrong place? What if Zuko is somewhere else? Somewhere far away?

Iroh takes the chance, slim as it might be, and hangs up the phone. He dials the number back, and almost collapses with relief when he hears a beeping ringtone from the other side of the pond.

He sees his nephew, and breaks out into a run.

The boy is sprawled on the ground, his limbs spread out and his face buried in the mud and grass. His entire body shivers in the cold night air.

“Zuko!” He crashes down to his knees next to him and rolls him sideways.

The boy blinks, and a low moan escapes his lips, and Iroh almost lets go with shock.

Half of his face is a mess of blood, mud and fluids Iroh can’t name.

It’s blistered, and red, and black, and yellow, and his eye is swollen shut, and _Agni_ , his ear is twisted and ruined. Like the top has been folded over and melted against the bottom.

His hair on the left side is singed off, and the burn keeps going, up his scalp and across his eyebrow and grazing his cheekbone.

Zuko is weak and floppy in his arms as he picks him up.

Iroh has never driven so fast.

* * *

Single fatherhood falls into his lap for the third time.

Zuko wakes up screaming from nightmares multiple times each night, and Iroh has to stop himself from thinking that it’s remarkably similar to having a newborn.

It wouldn’t be fair to think of Zuko in those terms.

The boy screams out for mercy, for forgiveness, for the pain to _stop_ , _please_!

And Iroh can’t do anything but hold him tight and rock him like Ursa used to do.

Can’t do anything but smother the rage and soothe moisturizer over the burn that’s turning into a disfiguring scar across his nephew’s handsome face.

Can’t do anything but hope that he’s not damaging him further.

* * *

Iroh tries not to think about Ozai as his little brother.

It makes it easier to be angry. Easier to hate.

Easier to see Zuko flinch whenever he gets close, easier to tend to the burn, easier to be called _sir_ and have his nephew present himself for punishment, when it’s not his little brother the boy is fearing.

When it’s a faceless monster and not the boy he taught to read.

When it’s a stranger and not the man with his mother’s eyes and his father’s chin and his own smile.

* * *

Iroh researches autism again.

It’s been five years since the last time he looked it up, and the internet seems to have become... more optimistic.

He skims through a few pages, and learns that people with autism can live real lives, with the right support.

He reads about how it’s best to just let him flap his hands if he wants to. It’s not hurting anyone. Iroh reaches inside his body for the twist of embarrassment at how strange it looks, and lets it go.

He reads about how eye contact is unimaginably difficult, and decides never to force his nephew to look him in the eye again.

He reads about early intervention, and wishes he had pushed harder to take Zuko to a doctor in those first four and a half years when he didn’t even speak.

He reads about sensory sensitivity, and buys new lightbulbs for the house that don’t flicker or make sound. Not that he can hear or see the old ones, but Zuko stops squinting so it must make some difference.

He buys Zuko second hand clothes, soft and well worn and a little large, and Zuko sinks into them, pulling hoodies around his chest and breathing in the smell of Iroh’s laundry detergent.

He tries to put the thought of the burn out of his mind. Tries to let go of the rage and the shock, and the image of his little brother’s face twisting into a wide, cruel smile as he sears away his son’s skin.

He vows that Zuko will be okay now.

He knows it’s not that simple.

But he hopes it will be.

* * *

Iroh finds a bloody knife in the medicine cabinet above the sink.

He shouts at the tiny, trembling figure of his nephew, and then spends an entire afternoon searching for him when he runs off.

And then Zuko tells him his father’s ultimatum.

Ozai’s path to let him return home. Ozai’s impossible task.

And the boy is determined, obsessively so, to complete his mission.

To rid himself of all the eccentricities and habits that made him so unpalatable to his father.

To _cure_ himself of his _affliction_.

To smother down his responses, his personality, his habits, and replace them with a normal teenager.

A teenager who can talk to other people without sounding awkward or saying the wrong thing.

A teenager who can stand to be in a room with thousands of sensory inputs without clutching at the sides of his head and loosing those tiny, involuntary whines he sometimes makes.

A teenager who can make eye contact, and know when to talk and when to stay quiet.

A teenager who can do everything his father wanted, without difficulty or complaint.

It’s impossible.

It’s unnecessary.

It’s _cruel_.

Iroh can’t bear the desperation in his nephew’s voice, can’t bear to crush the certainty that his father wants him, that he will be welcomed home as soon as he accomplishes the inconsequential task of normality.

So he promises to help, against his better judgement.

He makes the boy tea, and teaches him to meditate, to recognize and process his emotions without reacting.

He signs him up to after school activities where he can learn skills and interact with his peers.

And he sets up a meeting with his brother.

* * *

Iroh sits in his little brother’s living room and seethes.

Ozai lounges in his seat, completely at ease, and Iroh fights down the desire to punch his teeth in.

He doesn’t want to discuss the burn. Not again. He doesn’t want to hear the sick pride in his brother’s voice.

“You told him he can’t come back until he’s normal.”

He states it. Like he’s talking about nothing. Like his pulse isn’t beating on pure rage.

“I did.”

Ozai doesn’t sound sorry. He doesn’t sound anything.

“It is not possible to cure the boy, Ozai,” Iroh snarls. “There’s nothing wrong with him! He’s just different. Nothing he does is going to change that!”

“Oh, I know,” Ozai’s mouth curves into an approximation of a smile, cruelty lacing his tone in a way Iroh has never heard from him before. “His brain is wired wrong. There’s nothing to be done.”

“Then why ask it of him?” Iroh suppresses the angry shaking in his hands. “Why tell him that he can come home if he accomplishes this task? Why give him that hope, when you know it’s impossible?

“If the brat sees coming back to my home as a reward, then who am I to dissuade him?”

Iroh holds back his shout of frustration.

He holds himself upright, holds his anger inside, and lets it burn through him.

“He’s been hurting himself!” Iroh growls, “punishing himself for acting as his mind and body requires!”

“Then he has learned at least one lesson.”

“What in Agni’s name are you talking about?”

“That boy can only learn through pain, Iroh. He is incapable of following direction. He is too stupid, and too stunted to understand correction. Perhaps he will never be normal, but he may be able to be trained into pretending. And if there is no one available to do it for him...”

“You disgust me,” Iroh hisses, gritting his teeth.

Ozai shrugs. Like his condemnation means nothing.

“You are _stubborn_!” Iroh shouts, launching out of the chair, losing some of his control. “You are going to _destroy_ that boy! And for what? Your pride?”

“He’s already broken,” Ozai flicks a speck of dust off his jacket.

Iroh sees red.

“I am ashamed to call you my brother, Ozai. Father would be so disappointed in you.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Ozai snaps, the first spark of emotion he’s shown in the whole conversation breaking through his indifferent mask. “Take the boy, and the two of you can live your petty little first born lives as far away from me as possible!”

Iroh clenches his fists and wills himself to look his brother in the eye. To sit back down.

For the barest moment, he recognizes the small boy he’d let follow him around when he was a teenager. He sees the bright eyes sparkle in a seven year old face as he hot-wired cars and took them for dangerously fast joyrides on the highway.

He sees the resentment that had flashed at him whenever they got home and their father had rolled his eyes at Iroh’s antics, and snapped recriminations at Ozai for following.

“You would be that weak, Ozai?” Iroh says quietly, “To hate your son for being born first? To resent him for being older than his sister?”

“Azula is everything she should be, and Zuko is nothing in comparison!”

“Is that how you choose to repay our father’s mistakes? You think that because he favored me—”

“He did not _favor_ you!” Ozai yells, “he worshiped the damned ground you walked on! He would have let you get away with _murder_!”

“Father loved us both! He was depressed. He was _grieving_!”

And Iroh knows. He knows that their father was always kinder to him. That in everything other than the abandonment of his responsibilities, leaving Ozai to Iroh instead of stepping up himself, in everything other than subtly making him hate his body, Iroh was favored. Iroh was loved, in a way that Ozai wasn’t. Iroh had eleven years with two happy, functioning parents.

And Iroh had never been told he was responsible for his mother’s death.

“Of course _you_ would think so!”

“So this is revenge then? You have spent the last thirteen years pounding your son down, to avenge whatever little inadequacies you had over having a more talented older brother?” Iroh’s hands curl into fists.

“You are not _better_ than me!” Ozai roars, and Iroh sees the desperation as clearly as the rage.

“At least I never raised my hand to my son! I have never tried to beat the disability out of a child!”

“You might have killed that teenager you hit with your car! I have never driven away from an active crime scene!”

“No, you just _dumped_ your child’s body after you _mutilated_ him!”

“Well thank Agni he had _you_ to pine at his bedside!”

“A month! A _month_ , I spent in hospital with him! He had four surgeries! He went into septic shock! He almost lost his eye! And where were you? Packing up his possessions to throw away! You _disgust_ me!”

“I wonder how long that teenager’s parents spent at his bedside,” Ozai snarls.

“I will not compete with you over the severity of our _crimes_ , Ozai!”

Iroh breathes, trying to pull the anger back inside him. Trying not to direct the fire in his veins towards his brother.

“Just... tell him you don’t want him back. Tell him he can’t come back. It’s _cruel_ , Ozai! Cruel!”

“The boy will never learn without motivation,” Ozai’s upper lip twitches in some parody of anger and amusement.

“And what, _exactly_ , is he supposed to be learning? That the people who are supposed to take care of him will hurt him every time he opens his mouth? That he deserves to be _burned_ for any divergence from the norm?”

“If those are the only lessons you can bother to discern, then I doubt he will ever see it differently,” Ozai spits.

“There are no lessons to be learned here! Not for him! He has done _nothing_!”

“Then keep him!” Ozai’s face screws up, deep lines appearing on his forehead and around his mouth.

“I will! If you think he’s ever coming back to you, you have sorely misjudged the situation.”

Ozai snarls, almost rising from his chair.

“You can hate me all you want, but—”

“I do not _hate_ you, little brother. I am desperately sad that this is the path you have chosen. That you would choose to hurt an innocent child. _Your_ child. I didn’t think you had it in you.” Iroh can’t stop his mouth from narrowing in disgust.

Ozai flinches back, his face twisting into anger.

“Don’t pretend you care about my choices now!”

“I have _always_ cared.”

“No! You only care now because you want to take _my_ son as some kind of replacement for your own!”

“Zuko will never replace Lu Ten. He is his own person.”

Ozai scoffs.

“Of course he can’t replace Lu Ten. He will never be anything more than he is right now. He will never be a real, full person.”

“You are blinded!” Iroh feels his anger beating at his ribs, trying to get out. Trying to lunge forward and grab his brother by the throat and shove him to the ground and cause him any fraction of the pain he has caused his son. “Blinded by your hatred, and your pride! That boy is precious, and kind, and deserves so much more than you gave him!”

“The boy is _weak_!”

“He does not deserve to _suffer_!” Iroh sees red, and feels like he could breathe fire. He takes a deep breath and calms his voice. “If I have to work for the rest of my life to undo what you’ve done to him, I will. You won’t win this.”

“Oh, Iroh,” Ozai chuckled darkly, “if you don’t know by now that I’ve already won, you’re even stupider than you look.”

* * *

Iroh spends three years slowly learning about what his brother has done to his nephew.

Zuko only ever discloses at the kitchen table, with tea in his hands and his eyes fixed firmly on Iroh’s hands.

Iroh has to be holding tea too.

Maybe it means he can’t surprise Zuko by reaching for him.

Iroh’s heart is heavy with that suspicion.

Zuko tells him awful things.

Tells him about being slammed into corners when he got overstimulated.

About his head bouncing off the wall when he wouldn’t make eye contact.

About bruises on his ribs from harsh kicks when he couldn’t get his kata forms correct.

About missed meals and fainting from dehydration after a day of practice in the sun.

About sharp yanks of his hair when he stuttered.

About fingers slammed into the hinge of a door when Iroh praised his swordplay.

About Azula’s little nails digging into his arms.

About Azula killing a duck at the pond and the beating he got for crying.

About the ruler in his therapist’s fist, cracking down across his palms whenever he wasn’t perfect.

About the lock on the outside of his bedroom door, keeping him contained, the threat of a refresher keeping him silent when guests came over.

When _Iroh_ came over, once.

About the fear. And the loneliness. And the knowledge that he was broken.

Iroh listens to all of it, and absorbs it into his heart.

He missed it all.

He let it happen.

And he will never let it happen again.

* * *

But then... Zuko is gone. Back at his father’s house.

Iroh calls him every day, and he doesn’t pick up.

Eventually, the number disconnects, and Iroh goes to the house.

Ozai tells him the boy is fine. That he doesn’t need to worry.

And all Iroh can think of is his brother’s face, twisting over rage and victory as he admits that he’s toying with his son.

As he admits that he held an iron to his face and branded him. Permanently.

And all Iroh can see is thirteen year old Zuko, bent over his tea and watching Iroh like he’s going to be hit, telling him about belts and rulers and fists and kicks and slaps and screaming. 

Iroh leaves on Ozai’s insistence, and he barely sleeps for months.

* * *

Three days after Zuko is admitted to the hospital, his heart barely in rhythm, his skin mottled with bruises and his body weakened from months of starvation rations and sleep depravation, Iroh goes home to get clean clothes and Zuko’s iPod.

The moment he steps out of his car, another door opens a few cars down, and Ozai unfolds himself from the back seat.

A roar of pure rage burns through every fiber of Iroh’s body, and he closes the gap between them in three long strides.

“What are you doing here?” He growls, only barely restraining himself from shoving his brother to the ground and throttling him. “How _dare_ you come here?”

Ozai shrinks a little, stepping out of Iroh’s path. He looks different. Purple smudges cover the bags under his eyes, and he holds himself smaller. He rubs a hand up and down his arm, and looks every bit the child Iroh had left behind when he went to university.

“I... I wanted to ask you a favor,” Ozai says quietly, with none of the arrogant sneering that characterized any of their conversations after Zuko’s burn.

“You want a _favor_ from me?” Iroh snarls.

“Yes.”

Iroh clenches his teeth, unable to get the image of the boy he just left at the hospital, IVs and monitors dwarfing him against the white sheets and bandages, out of his head.

“What could you _possibly_ ask of me?” He snaps. “What more could you possibly need, after I spent _three years_ persuading your son that he didn’t have to be afraid of every loud noise or sudden movement? After you forced him back to your house and did _that_ to him? How _dare_ you ask me for favors?”

“I... I’m sorry,” Ozai spits the words like they hurt to speak. “I didn’t... I didn’t intend...”

“You didn’t _intend_ to break six of his ribs? You didn’t _intend_ to whip him hard enough to rip open his back? You didn’t _intend_ to crack his skull? You didn’t _intend_ to rupture his eardrums, or starve him for months? You didn’t _intend_ to electrocute him until his heart gave out?”

Ozai stares at the ground until the final accusation lands.

“I didn’t electrocute him, Iroh,” he says, his voice a little shaky. “That... that was Azula.”

Iroh’s eyes widen in shock.

“Azula?”

“She... she told me to take him upstairs, and to clean up all the... all the blood,” his voice cracks, “and she shocked him. I... I found her doing CPR in the bathroom, and she was... she was out of her mind. I don’t... I don’t know what to do with her. She can’t remember it. She’s talking to herself. She keeps twitching like she can hear things that aren’t there, and she’s... she’s acting _crazy_ , and I don’t... I don’t know what to do.”

Ozai looks him in the eye, and Iroh sees the truth of his words. Sees what is almost fear in his little brother’s face.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says again, almost pleading. “Please. You have to... you have to take her. I... I think I... I think I really fucked up, Ro.”

Iroh feels the nickname like a punch to the gut. It’s been so long since Ozai used it.

“You want me to take Azula from you?”

“Yes. I can’t... she’s... I don’t know how to make it right. I think she’s... she doesn’t even remember almost killing him. She’s talking to her mother like she’s actually in the room. And when I came in, when she was doing CPR on the boy, she shouted at me, like she _was_ Ursa.”

Iroh raises his eyebrow. That doesn’t sound good.

“You think she’s been hearing voices? Hallucinating?”

“Yes!” Ozai looks almost desperate.

“And you want me to help her.”

“Yes. You... you took the boy and—”

“ _Zuko_ ,” Iroh corrects harshly. “Your _son’s_ name is Zuko.”

“I—I know,” Ozai says quietly, “you took Zuko. You helped him, and all I ever did was...”

“Beat him? Burn his face? Scream at him? Take him to therapists who hit him when he displayed any outward sign of his _neurological disorder_?”

“I... yes. All of that,” Ozai whispers. If Iroh didn’t know better, he would think he was ashamed.

“And now you want me to take Azula too. You want me to help your children recover from your violence, and your utter disregard for their safety?”

“Yes,” Ozai hangs his head. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You have _failed_ ,” Iroh spits, “as a father, and as a man.”

Ozai doesn’t reply.

“I am _embarrassed_ to be related to you. Your actions have been repulsive beyond words. It’s only for Zuko’s privacy and peace of mind that I haven’t gone over the heads of all those officials you have in your pocket to the press, and told everyone exactly what kind of person you are.”

“I... I know.”

“I don’t want to ever see you again. I don’t want you anywhere near the children.”

“But you’ll take Azula?”

“Of course I will,” Iroh snaps, “because she is my _family_. She is my _blood_. And she is a _child_. Not that you care about any of those things.”

“I care,” Ozai says hoarsely. “I care about my daughter.”

“But not about your son.” It’s not a question, and Ozai doesn’t answer.

“Her things are in the car,” Ozai gestures towards the black sedan.

“You packed up her possessions without even making sure I would take her?” Iroh growls, “what would you have done if I’d said no? Just thrown her out, like you did to Zuko?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“You are _pathetic_ ,” Iroh’s hands itch to take hold of his shoulders and shake him.

“I’ll... I’ll tell her driver to take her here after school,” Ozai’s shoulders hunch in on themselves, just like Zuko’s do when he feels scolded.

“You’re not even going to tell her that you’re abandoning her?”

“She wouldn’t... she wouldn’t understand.”

“No. I’m sure she wouldn’t. Bring her things inside. I’m going back to see Zuko, and then I’ll be here when your daughter arrives. I’ll even explain your abdication of your responsibilities in a positive light, because, Agni knows why, she seems to look up to you. I won’t crush her further than you clearly already have.”

“T-thank you, Iroh.”

“Get out of my sight,” Iroh spits.

“Brother, I—”

Iroh looks at him for a long moment, one finger in the air to cut him off.

He looks, and he sees the squalling baby without a mother.

The little boy with scraped knees and a grin as wide as his face.

The sullen preteen with resentment in his eyes.

The angry teenager who wouldn’t hold his nephew.

The stoic brother reading Iroh’s eulogy for his wife, letting him support himself on his arm

The proud young man at his wedding.

The young father holding his infant son with reverence.

The man clenching his son’s shoulder as the boy quivers under his gaze.

The man who made the choice to heat up an iron and press it to his son’s skin.

Iroh sees him.

And Iroh doesn’t want to let any part of him go.

But he has responsibilities. Responsibilities foisted on him by his father, by his brother, by his own sense of justice.

So he steps backwards.

“You are _not_ my brother. This cannot be forgiven. Never.”

Iroh turns away, and misses the horror and resignation spreading over Ozai’s face.

It doesn’t matter anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Oooff
> 
> That was a lot.
> 
> I just... I really love Iroh, you know? He’s so complex, and spent the majority of his life in a super morally gray area.
> 
> And like... his entire family apart from Ozai and his kids is dead? That’s a lot of death.
> 
> The title is from The Prince of Egypt, and there’s a super beautiful Iroh & Ozai music video thing on YouTube that I recommend. https://youtu.be/6CtGBX2DpyU
> 
> I have another couple of stories for this AU. One is a Sokka centric thing, which is turning out way longer than I anticipated. Currently I think it’s at 15000 words, and I’m no where near done. I think there are a couple more after that too. Look out for Zuko actually going to real therapy maybe 😮😮😮😮


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